In power systems employing renewable energy sources, it is often desirable to store excess energy for use during times when power demand exceeds power generation capacity. For example, in a system employing wind, solar, and hydroelectric power generation, an excess of energy may be produced on a clear, windy day, but on a cloudy, calm day, or a calm night, power demand may exceed what these sources may produce. Further electrical demands placed on the local grid will vary during the course of a day, week, or season. Since it is not often practical or possible to turn generation sources on and off, inevitably excess energy will be created. So some energy storage means are required to store the excess energy produced during the production period and which can later be used to utilize the stored energy to provide power for consumption. Various solutions have been realized, such as using batteries, etc. for this purpose. Using hydrogen gas as an energy storage medium has been found to be particularly attractive due to its relatively high energy value and storage capacity.
Hydrogen can be produces with a large amount of electricity such as electrolysis. Electrolysis is one of the well-established technologies for hydrogen production. Electricity is used by an electrolysis cell to generate hydrogen and oxygen with heat and water as by products. The generated hydrogen is then compressed and stored in, for example, tube trailers which can be used by a fuel cell plant to generate electricity at any time. This approach is particularly of interest in small isolated grids.
It is observed that the hydrogen production rate can be increased by using multiple electrolysis cells simultaneously. However, the conventional power systems may not be sufficiently equipped to simultaneously power multiple electrolysis cells. For example, the known power systems directly use a power source, such as the renewable energy source, of a particular rated power (voltage and current) for electrolysis of water, using the electrolysis cell, for hydrogen production. Such power systems may be inefficient because at any given instant these can only power one electrolytic cell using the direct connection with the power source.
Therefore there is a need of a system which can replicate the input power source to power multiple electrolytic cells simultaneously and thus significantly increase the rate of hydrogen production.